Hist-UA 70. Tues Thursday 8:00-9:15, Silver 509
David Ludden, Office Hours W 12-2, KJCC 526 (53 Wash Sq So)
Description:
Global Asia is a space of mobility forever shaping and changing the form and content of human territory. Asian societies, cultures, and political economies have always been shaped by complex, dynamic, mobile historical processes, which expand human connectivity and transform territories of culture, power, and authority. Global Asia’s mobile space stretches from Russia and the Mediterranean to the Bering Sea and South Pacific, and spans regions all around the so-called Silk Road and Indian Ocean, from Africa to Polynesia, from ancient times; it extends around the world, after 1500.
This course explores Global Asia over two millennia up to the onset of industrial modernity in the nineteenth century. Students acquire a view of History in the long run that throws new light on our world of nation states. During this semester, we will travel by land and sea around the Silk Road and Indian Ocean, from ancient times, and around the world, after 1500, to study changing spaces of human mobility where people create cultural territories for economic development and politics. We analyze the long-term spatial expansion of travel, communication, connectivity, exchange, and territoriality, focusing particularly on mobile groups, social forces, and strategic sites along routes where people weave distant cultures together: we study nomads, migrations, religions, empires, armies, merchants and trade, sailors, port cities, and learned elites.
Travels of Buddhism and Islam provide a compelling spatial frame for social, political, economic, and cultural history in Afro-Eurasia before 1850. To enhance our course work, we visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Rubin Museum to appreciate Buddhist and Islamic art and architecture as mobile territorial technologies. Students can focus their own course work on subjects of personal concern and student projects can be tailored to student interests.
READING: All required reading is online and averages about 100 pages per week.
POWERPOINTS: All class PowerPoint Presentations (with enhancements and additions) are in our GoogleDrive PPT Folder.
DISCUSSION: We continue class discussion in our GoogleDrive Discussion Page
WRITING: all student writing goes into their personal GoogleDoc Student folders
Writing Assignments:
- Five 1-page papers. Students write six one-page (double spaced) papers based on readings, presentations, and a prompt, due at the start of class, at the second meeting in weeks 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10.
- Three 5-page papers. Students write three five-page (double spaced) essays, based on all cumulative course material and approved outside sources, responding to prompts on the syllabus and discussed in class. They are due at the start of class in the second meeting in weeks 6, 11, and 15.
Grading is on a point system. One-page writing assignments are worth 5 points each (6 x 5 = 30) and five-page papers are 20 points each (3 x 20 = 60). Attendance and participation are worth 10 points. (Total: 30+60+10 = 100).
Final grade point equivalents: A = 94-100; A- = 90-93; B+ = 85-89; B = 80-84; B- = 75-79; C+ = 70-74; C = 65-69; C- = 60-64; D=50-59; F=<50.
Midterm grades are calculated proportionately on the basis of grades at the end of Week 7, including grades for four 1-page weeklies and one 5-page paper.
Visiting the Met
I want like to replace some class meetings with at least one class trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is a wonderful resource for this course, where we will pay a lot of attention to art and architecture. We will try to arrange visits according to student schedules.
MOSES CENTER FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
New York University is committed to providing equal educational opportunity and participation for students with disabilities. CSD works with NYU students to determine appropriate and reasonable accommodations that support equal access to a world-class education. Confidentiality is of the utmost importance. Disability-related information is never disclosed without student permission. https://www.nyu.edu/students/communities-and-groups/students-with-disabilities.html. Contact: mosescsd@nyu.edu
RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS
Students need to make sure they are familiar with the provisions and obligations of The University Calendar Policy on Religious Holidays, which states, in part: “Students who anticipate being absent because of any religious observance should, whenever possible, notify faculty in advance of such anticipated absence.”
Course Organization:
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- Each week consists of two class meetings.
- The first meeting is a lecture/discussion based on course reading.
- The second meeting is for Q&A discussion with student presentations
- This course is part of a two-part Global Asia sequence. These two courses overlap chronologically, but their content is distinct. Each course can be taken separately.
- Each week consists of two class meetings.
AN EPIC TALE IN FIVE ACTS
Act I. circa 300BCE-600CE. Circuits of mobility emerge that would shape everyday life all around the Old World. An Asian Circulatory System begins to emerges in travels by land and sea.
Act II. 600s-900s. Militant empires connect circuits of mobility. Nomad horse warrior steppe migrations dismantle old empires in East, South, and West Asia, and set up new warrior regimes around the Silk Road, stimulating Abbasid-Tang trade expansion across the Indian Ocean.
Act III. 900s-1200s. “Medieval Warm Period” economic development produces new routes of opportunity connecting the Indian Ocean and Central Asia through India. Trade and imperial power expanded in South India and Southeast Asia, increasing connectivity around the Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea, East Africa, and Persian Gulf.
Act IV. 1200s-1500s. Mongol conquest and related migratory militarism integrate and expand the Asian Circulatory System, extending around the Black Sea into Russia and Europe, laying mobile militant territorial frames for commercial expansion by land and sea, embracing Europe, stimulating European investments to control Eurasian trade by sea.
Act V. 1500s-1800s. The largest-ever Asian empires generate massive wealth; their coastal regions sustain militant European trade extending around Atlantic and Pacific. A global economy of seaborne networks anchored in port-cities enrich Asian territories and European imperial powers that expands inland from coastal port cities.